A man wanted to travel to another continent, but he did not have a boat. Someone told him about a series of holes & caves that led to the other continent. The path led into the earth & into a tunnel of mud, through which he waded. The path led into a tunnel of slime. He waded though it, though the stink sickened him. The path led into a lake of fire & this he could not pass. Gathering many large rocks, he dropped one into the lake of fire & stepped onto it & then dropped another large rock in front of him & stepped onto that & then another & another & in this way he made his way halfway across the lake of fire. He decided to take a break, for though his plan was working carrying these large rocks was tiring. He sat & drank some lemonade & then lay down & took a little nap. But in his sleep he had a weird dream of falling into a florescent light, all buzzing & flickering, & he woke in convulsion, which knocked all the remaining rocks he carried with him into the lake of fire. There they made a small island. He tried to pull the rocks out but they were stuck. After many attempted & failed ideas, he resigned himself to living on the island. He built a small log cabin. Grew a nice little garden. He trained his hounds not to run too near the lake of fire. Luckily he could e-lance & take care of bills online. On weekends he’d pack a little lunch, put a six-pack in the cooler & spend the whole day fishing on the shore. He didn’t care whether he caught anything, simply loved how the fire rippled out from where his sinker dropped. But when he did catch something, if he could pull it in quickly enough, it was hot & flaky, already fully cooked & delicious when he cut it open.
*
I did not come to bathe my weary body in the lake. Yesterday costs nothing. This perpetual comma-ing between events of me rends the garment of me. I am a tree & I’m walking down the streets of a very modern city, the sidewalks never empty, how waste points to people. The mere meat a garment defines, a daguerreotype, can do anything. And stillness makes the heart fuck harder. I am a tree but I search the couch, the drawers, & all I find is man-love, bob-wire & crust. Some say language barricades the self from the sublime. Some say They still from me. But when glass cuts my bark & the white flesh gleams, it is not blood but words that emerge.